he will do it hereafter:  The rules of divine administration are doubtless uniform in time and eternity.  Where he gives a comparative preference here, he will do the same hereafter.  So we observe our Savior noting things commendable in some who did not belong to his kingdom.  When the young ruler who came to inquire what he should do to inherit eternal life, declared that he had kept the commandments from his youth up, he was viewed with comparative approbation.—­“Then Jesus beholding him, loved him.”  It is not conceivable that his partial conformity to the divine law had not made him to differ from those who had allowedly disregarded it—­that his character was as bad as theirs—­though he soon made it evident that the one thing needful was not found upon him. *

* Mark x. 17, &c.

Some suppose that the unrenewed can do nothing but sin against God with all their might—­that every purpose of their hearts is necessarily enmity against him, and all their volitions and actions determined opposition to his law and government:  But we conceive that neither Scripture, nor experience justify the supposition—­that were such their state, they would be in no degree, the subjects of moral government, and would not be addressed of God as moral agents.

Were mankind wholly given up of God, and his Spirit withdrawn from them, such might become their state; but this is not the case.  The Holy Spirit strives with them.  They are empowered to resist the Spirit, or cherish its influences.  This is manifest from the divine exhortations addressed to them, and from their conduct.  Sometimes they pause in the way to destruction—­listen to counsels and warnings—­do things which God requires, and deny themselves gratifications which are in their power, because God hath forbidden and threatened to punish them.  The person is not to be found who hath not a witness in himself that this is the case.

Should we affirm that none, who are in a state of nature, can be influenced by sense of duty to deny themselves, or attempt obedience to God’s law, it might give occasion to false hopes.  Those, the general course of whose lives is opposition to God, sure that they sometimes deny themselves, and like Herod, do things enjoined from above, might flatter themselves that they were children of God, while belonging to another family, and that they should have peace, when there was no peace to them. Yet when the Lord cometh, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts, every man shall have praise of God.

God will overlook nothing commendable which may have been done by the vilest of the human race, while on probation; and some things commendable will be found in the most degenerated; though in many, the good will be found so low as to leave them on the whole, the servants of sin, and consequently to take their portion among the workers of iniquity.